March 26, 2011
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Day Two: Infra-red
Chinese Language and Culture, paper 3, listening.
I’m lucky to be in one of the centres that have infra-red (IR) system.
Yesterday, when I see an array of red panels hanging on the walls, I know from my heart: so these are the infra-red emitter! And today they confirmed my guess by their glowing red bottom-right corner. Other parts of the panels are emitting infra-red radiation at the same time, I presume. Interestingly, I thought the receiver would have an equally obvious IR receiving module, but that is not the case.
The infra-red broadcasting system actually works better than I thought. I covered the receiver with my admission form, my ID, my hands, put it in my jacket, under the desk, tried every measure that could possibly block the signal, and it still performs very well. No distortion or sound degrade occur in the test process.
But is it perfect? Of course not. The background noise is very loud, to the extend that it makes my ear uncomfortable, while using ER-4p.
Comments (2)
but i really really hate the pressure imposed by the greensleeves
it’s crazy when u need to listen to the same damn song for a hour
and most importantly we, both candidates and invigilators, never know whether the silence should be normal or whatever.
it really gets on every pupils’ nerve.
@zifefivesea -
@@ I knew exactly when the recording stopped, as I had done a little experiment to the receiver. : p
When there is a receiving problem, a loud hiss will be produced instead of a silence, as a conventional radio will do. The first time I covered the receiver with three layers of clothings and heard a hiss, I was confused, as I didn’t expect that. When the recording stopped, a silence came, I found it amusing that numerous candidates raise their hands.
This is like a positive-feedback system. When you are calm and know what’s going on, everything happens will just reassure you; but if you don’t know the way, everything will just creep you out and raise your cortisol and adrenaline level ;-p